


All Made Up How You Like

by HoneySempai, soup_illustrations (potofsoup)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Anxiety, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Cissexism, Deception, Dysphoria, Emotional Trauma, Gender Nonconforming Bucky Barnes, Intersex Steve Rogers, Jewish Bucky Barnes, Jewish Steve Rogers, M/M, Me projecting my own issues onto Bucky? Never, Nonbinary Bucky Barnes, Perisexism, Sibling Loss, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Steve is not a therapist but he tries, The boys are stupidly in love in every sense of the term, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-05
Updated: 2017-07-05
Packaged: 2018-11-23 03:24:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11394363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HoneySempai/pseuds/HoneySempai, https://archiveofourown.org/users/potofsoup/pseuds/soup_illustrations
Summary: Bucky Barnes disappeared a long time before Hydra got him.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Come on, don't push me down that road  
> I'm always twisting, always sold  
> I will follow,[ all made up how you like ](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jdzira31R8c)  
> In backseats, indoors  
> And love when you want me to love  
> Oh, I will bleed when you want me to bleed  
> But I don't wanna know too much of anything  
> Because it all hurts me
> 
>  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to my second Cap RBB offering! This one is sort of a parallel universe to my Greatest Generation series, this time based on not just my headcanons, but that of my artist's. You don't have to have read the other series to get what's going on here, though it might be more comfortable for those who are familiar with some of my headcanons and research. 
> 
> Such major thanks to my artist [Pot of Soup](http://potofsoup.tumblr.com) for her art and her support. 
> 
> **TW whore-shaming, internalized and externalized perisexism/cissexism, medical procedures, child death**

When Bucky is three years old, he gains an older brother and a younger sister in the space of eight months.

George Martin Barnes Jr, Georgie for specificity's sake, is the product of a disastrous quasi-arranged match between his namesake and a gold digger; a match that burned out when George shipped home from France and found her in bed with someone who made it home a few weeks before he did.

Rebecca Pearl Barnes, alternatively Becca or Becky or Becks, is the product of the arrangement between a man and the prostitute whose company he sought as the divorce proceedings, albeit as quick as such things can be, took their toll on him. She manages to be born on the right side of the blanket by the skin of her teeth; George Barnes becomes a free man, and immediately shackles himself again, when Winifred is only about a month and a half along. Rebecca is born a little small, and is presumed a little early.

Bucky himself comes from his mother's desperation to send money to her sister back in Scotland, the baby of the family wasting away in a sanatorium with their parents dead since '93 and the other two sisters lost to the bloodbath they had tried to nurse soldiers through in Serbia. He doesn't know that, technically, his existence was paid for until he's older, when his step-cousins rub that fact in his face, along with several fistfuls of dirt.

Georgie defends him then, and again and again against his father's family and the social circle they build around themselves. The boy loves his stepmother probably more than his biological mother, and why wouldn't he? Winifred is as kind and affectionate with him as she is with her biological children, and just as in need of the affection he can give her, which lends him a pleasing feeling of usefulness. Winifred had come to America all alone, and she lost the community she had substituted her natal family with when her unwed pregnancy came to light. George is acutely aware that he and the boys and Rebecca, and later Bonnie and Bessie, are the only things keeping her from feeling completely cut adrift in the world, and even before they find, or figure, out the whole story, her sons catch onto it, too.

That George is in a somewhat fragile state himself isn't a difficult thing to figure out, either. The truth of it is blatant whenever a car horn blares and George grips the steering wheel tight enough to turn his hands white, or lightning strikes too close and too loud and his eyes go wide, or when the 6'2 decorated veteran sits on the parlor couch with a never-empty glass of prescription wine and shrinks pitifully further and further into the cushions with every sip.

Georgie and Bucky come to something of an unspoken agreement early on. They'll pool their strengths to keep the family running smoothly, to ease out any unnecessary tensions that might disrupt the delicate peace their parents have finally claimed as their own. Georgie picks their dad, because he's full of energy and knows how to make it infectious; Bucky chooses their mom, because his presence is calm and a tonic for someone whose nerves have been in a perpetual state of frayed since birth. Bucky also takes to minding the girls; he makes sure their chores and schoolwork are done and their bedrooms are kept neat, plays tea party and dolls with them, smiles and laughs when they adorn him with cosmetic jewelry and the odd scraps of old makeup Winifred passes their way. And Georgie, for his part, protects them; he takes up watch along the edges of playgrounds and sidewalks to make sure that their games of jump rope and hopscotch go unharassed. He figures out how to fight effectively pretty early on, and Bucky learns by example for those occasions when his stepbrother isn't around, or when he needs backup.

That's how they acquire Steve. Georgie's eagle eye immediately picks out the fact that the poorly-dressed stranger Doesn't Belong Here; he's not the only one, and there are enough teenagers attempting to mug the boy that Bucky has to get involved, too. Georgie's a good enough fighter that he can grab and hold their attention long enough for Bucky to seize the little blond kid and hustle him off to safety.

It's a serendipitous meeting, despite the black eye Bucky gets before Steve figures out that he's being aided and not assaulted by him. Steve's in the neighborhood looking for work to supplement his mother's income, but the fear of further violence prompts him to go home with the Barnes' children. Georgie and Bucky cringe when Winifred has to call Steve's mother, even though parental involvement was inevitable at this point. When they go with their parents to drop Steve off, however (since their family has a car and Steve's family does not), they get to see their mother smile when she notices the tiny mezuzah in the Rogers' doorframe.

Turns out Sarah and Winifred recall each other, having come from the same Lower East Side neighborhood. Sarah had married a convert--or rather, she got a man to convert for her--and moved away with him to Brooklyn before Winifred fell on hard times, though she was kept in the loop by her network of friends and relations. But Sarah's a nurse, and she's attended women in all sorts of unfortunate circumstances, including the births of illegitimate children and the repairing of noses and limbs broken after a john got violent. She's as pleasant to Winifred as she is to anyone else, and Winifred's got a good eye for reading people. It's genuine. Georgie and Bucky are encouraged to see Steve again.

Not that Bucky would need encouragement. He's known there's something...unusual about himself since 1927, when he went into the wrong movie theatre, wound up seeing _Wings_ , and spent days afterwards thinking about the kiss between David and Jack. He'd kept what he'd done and that sense of wonder a secret--it felt as illicit and unconfessable as the scene of Mary changing clothes--but he takes it out of hiding and holds it to his heart when he thinks about Steve.

Truth be told he's known there's something unusual about himself for far longer than that, since George caught him looking at himself in the mirror after being fully adorned and done up by his little sisters, and chuckled about how he was a good sport. Bucky almost explained that no, he was enjoying himself as much as they were; he loves getting made up and looks forward to these games, but the street smarts he must have inherited from Winifred kept him quiet then, too.

People must pick up on something though, because it's hard for him to hang onto friends from year to year, and rather easy for George's nieces and nephews to turn their classmates against him. Steve is the first real loyalty he's felt outside his family, probably because Steve also understands what it means to be a pariah, just without the benefit of adoring siblings.

Becky and Bonnie and Bessie (Georgie sometimes tells people to call him "Barnes" just so he can have matching initials with his siblings) all clamor to make up for that. Steve--underweight, undertall, asthmatic--can't spend very much time running around outside, so he ends up being something of a "good sport" himself, despite his pouting (George and Winifred pay him to "baby-sit" so he doesn't pout visibly very often). He'll drink immaterial tea and play dolls with them--he's spent enough time sick in bed to have developed a robust imagination, and under his guidance their dolls learn to fight Heinies and hunt deer as well as dance at balls and care for babies--though he draws the line at being "dolled up" himself.

Bucky wishes Steve wouldn't. He thinks Steve would look good in the girls' hand-me-down cosmetics. Steve is so... _lovely_ , in every respect; in both ways that Steve appreciates (his open, perpetually bleeding heart; his quick mind; his indomitable courage) and that he doesn't (his delicate fine-boned frame; his daylong eyelashes). He's beautiful in the sunlight streaming through the leaves and windows; he's beautiful in the Shabbos candlelight Winifred takes Bucky and the girls to enjoy at Sarah's apartment on Fridays, while Georgie stays at home and entertains their father. He's especially beautiful when Bucky accidentally walks in on him getting changed--he'd spent the night, and Steve thought him still asleep in the living room--and sees Steve tightening a lacer around his chest and, for a brief glittering moment, "Oh. He knows what I feel."

He doesn't. In fact he's mortified and angry, which is Steve for terrified; the closest Bucky has ever seen him come to crying as he says "I'm not...a girl, I'm not _part_ -girl, I'm not... _half_ a girl, I'm--"

Bucky realizes just in time that Steve thinks the look on Bucky's face is one of disgust, rather than disappointment. He turns it around subtly, immediately, makes himself look curious; nods along as Steve haltingly explains that he'd been born "undercooked" as one doctor had put it; he's been steeling himself for this body for several years and he knows he shouldn't be ashamed but he _hates_ it, he hates it _so much_. At the end of it he tells Steve that of course he doesn't think that Steve is disgusting or scary now; that they're still best friends and always will be; that Steve doesn't have to talk about it anymore if he doesn't want to, and that Bucky will never, ever tell anyone.

He decides to stop playing dress-up. At first, he thinks it'll be only when Steve is there. Then he considers that he'll have to tell his sisters that Steve doesn't like it, which opens up the possibility that he'll "tell on" Steve at worst, and in any case puts too much onus on Steve to defend himself. So instead he stops completely, and when the girls complain he says that he's twelve now, and he's outgrown these games. He is a boy, after all.

Which isn't a lie. It's just...only _mostly_ true.

He thinks, also, that it might help. He of course has never let himself be seen outside the house in these get-ups, but maybe people will stop sensing his "off"-ness if he stops doing it altogether, even in private. It's not for him; people can say or do whatever they want about him and he definitely does not care, but if he's out with the girls or Steve he doesn't want them to have to deal with it, or for Georgie to have to keep defending him (or for Steve to try, for that matter).

It doesn't work. 

*

They expect it to be Steve. By all rights it _should_ be Steve, who despite now being fed at two households doesn't yet weigh over sixty pounds, and who can barely mind his own business in public without getting his ass kicked, let alone speak up against something. 

But Steve is also the kid who has to disappear for a few days, and sometimes weeks, when he's come down with something, so it's just the Barnes family that's at Coney Island this particular day. Georgie and Bucky have been allowed to wander off together (Bucky being twelve, Georgie's just turned fourteen); the goal is to work up the nerve to get on the Cyclone before the day's end, and to aid the fast they've been maintaining they've been running ahead of their family, reaching every ride and game several minutes ahead of the others Barnes. And they're doing pretty well for themselves, until they start being followed. 

They're friends of the cousins; Georgie knows them from the high school. Bucky only vaguely recognizes them, but they sure seem to know who he is, enough to yell out after him until they're absolutely sure that he and Georgie notice them. 

"Can we please ignore them," Bucky mutters under his breath, because he really doesn't feel like fighting on a day when they're supposed to be enjoying themselves, and Georgie nods, slinging an arm around Bucky's shoulders protectively, supportively. Ten minutes of having their existence purposely disregarded only seems to embolden them, though, because they start coming closer, talking loudly about how rude it is for people to not acknowledge their names being called, when they only want to have a friendly conversation. 

"Friendly conversation" turns out to be a few colorful vulgarities based on Bucky's nickname, stage-whispered at first, and then shouted once Bucky and Georgie move far away enough. Georgie's hand, clenched at his side, relaxes a bit when a nearby barker yells for the strangers to mind where they are; he and Bucky manage to slip away into the crowd, and he hopes that that's the end of it.

Then about fifteen minutes later someone grabs Bucky by the back of his head, shoving him forward into a lamp pole, and announces that he's "found Suckjob Barnes, working the street like his mother" and both of them drop the pacifism immediately. 

Bucky's not as skinny and small as Steve but he's still more wiry and shorter than Georgie, who is built along his father's broad lines, so despite throwing and landing the first punch he gets pushed in and out of the fray rather easily. They're in an uncrowded area, and the four-on-one-sometimes-two fight is getting steadily more violent with each passing second, egged on by the startled cries and futile attempts to break up the fight by a few stray passers-by. Bucky's got blood dripping into his eyes from a cut on his forehead by the time someone finally manages to grab him and keep him from jumping right back into the fray, and for years he wonders if that hadn't happened would things have turned out differently, would his brother not have lost the upper hand and his footing, would he have not gotten kicked in the side over and over before Bucky tore free and threw himself on Georgie's attacker.

The fight's finally garnered enough attention for an attempt to break it up to actually work, and the rest of the Barnes family has been drawn over by the spectacle even before they figure out that their two oldest children are part of it. The aggressors take off before enough people congregate to prevent a later escape, and Winifred has to be stopped from chasing after them when she sees what's been done to her sons. The girls are, naturally, upset over the state of their brothers, Georgie's left side is throbbing with pain, and the gash on Bucky's forehead looks like it might need stitches, so the family stonily packs up and heads home.

They'd taken the train, rather than their car, which made the ride back rougher. They don't call Sarah to look at Bucky, since they know she's already put off taking work calls to look after Steve; the nurse that shows up sutures Bucky, and only advises rest and painkillers for Georgie. 

Bessie wakes up the next morning coughing and a little dizzy, so when Georgie complains of feeling light-headed they think he's also picked something up from a stranger at the beach or on the train. 

He supposes that the pain starting to radiate up his shoulder from his side is just residual soreness right up until the point that he collapses. 

The splenectomy itself isn't too late, nor are the blood transfusions, and he gets through the hospital stay just fine, coming home in time for a pneumonia outbreak that sends half of Red Hook to their beds or to the hospital. But that shouldn't be too bad, George and Winifred reason. Georgie has always had a strong constitution. He sailed through emergency surgery. He shouldn't have a problem. 

They expect it to be Steve. 

*

Bucky is scared shitless that now it _will_ be Steve, and just like with Georgie it'll be his fault. 

They haven't seen each other in a month; Steve was too sick to even make it to the funeral, let alone see his friends during the week. Bucky had been looking forward to when Steve was recovered enough for Winifred to resume their Friday nights at the Rogers' apartment, but when that time comes Bucky takes one look at his father and knows that he couldn't possibly go with them; couldn't leave the man who had taken him in, accepted him as his own against all his own self-interests and is now suffering for it, to sit with a phantom child all night. 

They do talk on the phone for a little bit on the following Sunday, and when Steve asks why Bucky wasn't there, Bucky feels self-consciously protective on his father's quiet, private behalf and lies that he just lost interest and has other things to do now. 

"Oh. Okay," Steve says, disappointment dripping in all three syllables, and Bucky wants to cry and throw up and punch the wall even more than he normally does nowadays. Next Sunday, because his mom and the girls will be home with his dad after he gets back from church, he walks to Steve's place, so he doesn't have to ask for a ride, or for his family to fetch Steve like they normally do. 

He keeps this up for months, whether Steve is healthy or ill, even when the weather starts to turn, until his parents finally make him stop before he catches his death and they lose him, too. Privately he thinks maybe that wouldn't be so awful, but he acquiesces and accepts being dropped off because Steve seems to brighten up when he's there and he'll pay the little bits of guilt for that smile until winter melts into spring and he can once again walk himself over. 

July of 1931 is a big deal for Steve, and Bucky sits on his...jealousy? regret? unnameable empty feeling so Steve can get untarnished happiness out of his birthday and a few days later his bar mitzvah. It's the first joyous thing to happen to either family in a long time, and Sarah, normally (and justifiably) pretty tight-fisted, is willing to splurge the tiniest bit to celebrate.

It's actually Bucky who suggests going back to Coney. He doesn't know why he does it, and he half-feels regret when everyone gives him a strange look when he says it; the other half he can't really identify beyond a strange sense that he'd made plans with his brother that he really ought to follow up on at some point. The whole stupid point of them being on their own that day had been to work up the nerve to get on that ride, after all.

"'Course it's your birthday, so you get to pick," he tells Steve, and Steve gives him a weird look, and then a softer one, and says that yeah, that's where they're gonna go.

Bucky wants to kiss him, which is nothing new. Steve is his best friend, his almost-everything; of course he would understand.

He should've kept his mouth shut, or at least should have recalled that Steve had been fighting a stomach ulcer all morning yesterday, or at the very least shouldn't have needled Steve to go on the Cyclone with him, so nonchalant and teasing while his own stomach rioted with swallowed tears, because now Steve is puking his guts up in a trash can, and _has been_ for what feels like a really long time.

There's cruel laughter coming from behind them, and a thread of terror shoots up Bucky's spine. He twists, keeping a hand on Steve's shoulder so he can hopefully glare down whoever is mocking them before he has to fight them, because it's just him now; he has no help and no one _to_ help; he's the only one who can keep Steve safe from now on. Thankfully this time there's no attack, just a handful of assholes passing by, and while his free hand stays clenched in a fist, the adrenaline recedes just as quickly as it came on. 

Steve is shaking pretty badly by the time he finally finishes throwing up, too badly to notice that Bucky is, too; his watery lips part to say "That was awesome. I am _never doing that again_ " (which is a dirty lie, because he gets back on the ride later that day, but of his own accord this time) and Bucky laughs and calls him a turd and silently decides that, yeah, Steve will never have to do anything for him ever again.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **TW internalized cissexism/perisexism; discussion of rape and torture; mention of alcoholism; anxiety**
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> In this chapter we see the prompt art.

When Bucky is twenty-four years old, people can still fucking tell.

Not everyone. He's pretty sure his family hadn't figured it out before he left, despite him and Steve never having ceased being neck-deep in each other's back pockets (especially after Steve had pulled him into a closet at the Barnes' place and God, yes, Bucky had never dared to hope that Steve wanted him back; and if neither of them are what they're supposed to be, maybe it isn't so existentially wrong for them to be drawn to each other). No one in either of his units noticed, or let on if they did.

No, just like his cousins and their ilk, the only people who can tell that he's "off" are the ones out for his blood. Except this time they're armed with knives and needles as well as words and fists, and half of the ones telling him how pretty he is and mocking his screams as being "like a woman's" are fucking _turned on_ by it.

He's sure Steve can smell it, when he comes for him. Even without knowing all the enhancements Steve has gotten besides the height and the strength, he almost certainly has to be able to. It's nearly everything Bucky smells; the scent of those men, their skin and sweat and semen all over him; it feels like it should be part of his own musk now. He dunks himself in a river on the hike back to base and it doesn't wash off; as soon as he gets his hands on a ration of soap he scours himself and the scent still lingers.

But Steve never says a word, and his silence is not the calculated kind; Bucky can tell. Good. That's good. That's something he doesn't have to put on Steve's plate, or even on his own plate. He's not thirteen anymore.

The war doesn't give anyone time to think about anything anyway, especially not their part in it. Not at first at least. Hydra takes that "two more heads" shit pretty seriously, and at first the SSR bounces them from base to base with the only break in between being within the time it takes to travel from one to the other. 

There are only so many Hydra bases, though, even considering all the backtracking they do to take out the newer, more discreet small ones cropping up in the wake of their destroyed predecessors. By the end of '44 the frequency of missions has slowed, and the distance between bases is getting longer. There's talk that the war might end soon, in the Allies' favor, too; it starts with whispers among the officers, and by the turn of the year all of the Commandoes are daring to talk about their plans for once they get home.

The optimism is at least a little infectious, but Steve's strictly not letting himself get _too_ certain about their ultimate victory; he's taken to the role of a professional grim higher-up pretty well. So when they raid one of the bigger, and last remaining, bases on their way to Germany via Liechtenstein, when the rest of the Commandoes want to celebrate, Steve waves them on their way and holes himself up to go over all the paperwork involved.

"Nah, you should go, have fun," Steve says, when Bucky offers to stay with him.

"You sure? It ain't gonna be any fun without me around..."

"I mean it, _go_."

The tone... _worries_ Bucky. Steve's always been observant (Sarah used to complain about him sneaking around and eavesdropping _all the time_ ) but mostly regarding events; figuring out a person's mind is more hit-or-miss with him, particularly if he's not familiar with their tells. So Bucky's been really goddamn careful, utilizing the circumstances of war to their fullest extent. Rations are universally acknowledged as crap, and not enough at that, so it's not hard to hide the hunger that, when he ignores the ache in his stomach and intestines, moves on to gnawing at his bones; he decided to prove himself pretty good at foraging, so he'll be the one asked to acquire supplemental nutrition when they're passing through woods or bombed-out villages (the semi-isolation of such a task also lets him steal seconds to hide and curl up and choke out some of the noises he ought to be screaming every time he feels his muscles starting to expand; thank God that's going so slowly that no one's really noticed the change). According to Steve, Bucky's always been something of a violent sleeper, and all of them have to be light ones, so tossing and turning before jerking awake shuddering and suddenly isn't seen as unusual, even if no one else is dreaming about being choked and strangled at the same time. And they don't actually often get their hands on alcohol, so after that first time following the Kreichsberg raid, when Bucky realized that shot after shot of whiskey wasn't doing anything to or for him, he hasn't had to fake intoxication very often.

When he does, he does it well. Rebecca, with her dreams of any sort of stardom, is all about the craft behind acting, about becoming the character. He's grateful to his younger self for actually listening to her excited chatter about _thinking_ like the person you're trying to portray. If he can get into his past's head, pretend to be drunk or full or fine hard enough, it's almost like actually being so.

But if Steve's _noticed_ anything...

Peggy joins them, surprisingly, and she stays even after realizing that Steve's not with them, even more surprisingly. Bucky supposes she needs a night away from everything just as much as any of them; even though she's as done up as ever, there's a tiredness around her eyes that she either can't or isn't bothering to hide. Maybe it's that tiredness that leads her to ask if any of the Commandoes want to dance with her.

"Settling, Agent Carter?" he teases, but it's not malicious-sounding, he hopes. It's not meant to be. He can't fault anyone for being in love with Steve, or even Steve for liking her back. Bucky's fully capable of noticing how entrancing she is; Steve hadn't really looked at anyone else in the past, even after he started taking testosterone, but whatever Erskine gave him has enhanced that particular drive, along with fixing up everything else that Steve had hated about his body. Steve is what he's supposed to be now, so, Bucky reasons, it's not at all shocking that he'd start sneaking glances at Carter. And this way if Bucky doesn't make it out, Steve's got a back-up plan, at least.

"In my entire life, I've never done anything except exactly what I want to do," Peggy banters, and while the other Commandoes and even some other bar patrons whoop and holler, Bucky tries to read her face.

She can tell. Probably not _everything_ , and maybe not any of the details, but going by the light way she's treated him, compared to how he's seen her shut down other unwanted aggressive advances and very thoroughly ensure that the men behind them cease to bother her henceforth, Bucky would be surprised if she wasn't aware of _something_ being...off with him.

She's kept her own counsel so far, though; Bucky knows, because if she had brought it up with Steve, Steve would have brought it up with him already. Steve seems to do everything Peggy wants him to.

Maybe that's why he does it, after Gabe accepts her invitation and she entrusts her little purse to the other Commandoes while she enjoys herself. There's no way she won't eventually notice the lipstick gone--it's the one luxury she's allowed herself to cart around throughout this horror show--but if she knows anything about him, anything at all, then she might allow it, so long as he returns it (and he's already got a plan as to how). And if she doesn't, well, Bucky can always just claim it was a drunken prank.

That's how he gets away with sneaking off with the bottle of scotch DumDum pays for. Bucky's acquired the reputation of being a bit of a lush, from that time when the Commandoes were cemented as a group, when he kept trying and trying to get himself drunk. It's made him even more grateful that he doesn't have to do this too often. Thankfully he's also thought to be the type to like drinking alone (which is...not untrue), so him disappearing rather early on in the evening is not too suspicious.

They _will_ check in with Steve later on, though, and Steve will get upset with him if he thinks Bucky's been stumbling around alone, so Bucky meanders for the amount of time it would take someone in his supposed state to get back if they were trying to go straight there, before he puts the right level of stagger in his step and clumsiness in his attempt to get the door open.

Bucky takes a second to parse the tone. God knows he misses being able to get actually ossified, but Steve's dad was apparently an awful drunk, a _mean_ drunk, so maybe Steve is more relieved about his permanent sobriety than anything.

He thinks, for a moment, about putting the scotch away. But Steve's engrossed in whatever he's reading--it's from Peggy; Bucky can pick up the whiff of her lingering scent on the pages even from across the room--and doesn't seem bothered by it, so it's okay for now. He can hang onto it, he can pretend, for a little while longer. 

Peggy's tube of lipstick digs into his thigh with the help of his shitty mattress. It's a pretty shade, dark but vibrant. One that he wouldn't have let Bonnie, the unrepentant Sheba, leave the house wearing, no matter how much she pouted.

"You all right, Buck?"

He's probably too sallow for it to look good on him. The residue of it might look okay; faded colors feel like they should suit him. Maybe he could swipe a finger over the tip after Steve's gone to bed, use the moonlight and the window to help him smooth it over his lips. He could wipe it off before he goes to bed himself, or when he wakes up, before Steve notices. He's definitely going to wake up before Steve.

"Buck?"

He responded, didn't he? He could've sworn he did. Shit, he didn't. He squints, quickly, and points questioningly to himself.

"Who else is here?" Steve is smiling, kind of, but he sets the paper down and stands up. Shit. That's Steve for concerned. _Doggedly_ concerned; the kind of worry that breaks all known laws of physics and good manners. Bucky's not getting out of this one. He needs to come up with something quick; something good, but not too much.

There. That oughtta do it. All the Commandoes have joked about/confessed to wishing they'd thrown their drinks in Steve's face, taken their honorable discharges, and booked it back home. Even Steve himself has made intimations, now and then, of similar. He'll infer that this is what Bucky's talking about. And it's not even a lie. It's just...only _partly_ true.

Bucky hasn't thought about the Cyclone in a long time. Hasn't let himself. Everyone else dealt with Georgie's death _normally_ ; tears, somber quiet, wine. He's the only one who finagled to revisit the site, the beginning of the end, and harangued his friend into helping fulfill a pre-mortem childish endeavor. The memory of Steve dashing away from the ride for the nearest garbage can still makes him cringe.

"...How do you mean?" Steve asks, quirking an eyebrow. 

Bucky shrugs tightly. He hadn't planned to say anything more; asking had been impulsive, brainless, and he's already severely regretting it. "Nothing, jus'...you didn't wanna go on it. Scared of it."

"I wasn't scared of it," Steve protests, and of course he wasn't. Steve's never been scared of a damn thing in his entire life. "I just knew what it was gonna do to me. Just like you know what this," Steve brandishes the bottle, "is gonna do to you if you keep this up."

Wouldn't that be a blessing Bucky would love to have. He flips over onto his back. 

"Why are you asking?"

Bucky waves a hand clumsily, dismissively. Maybe he can pretend to be feeling the alcohol enough to fall asleep. 

"Hey, no. You started the conversation, you finish it." Steve's voice is light-hearted, with just enough steel to be insistent.

"Just did," Bucky tosses back, in the same vein, but that's not going to be enough, so he tries to start the conversation again, on his own terms now. "You regret it?"

Steve gives him the oddest look he can muster, and hell, maybe he still _can_ actually get drunk, because he is quickly losing control of where this conversation is going. "It was a roller coaster...? I don't feel all that strongly about it?"

Bucky nods, or rather, rocks his head back and forth. His eyes are glued on the ceiling but he can feel Steve staring at him like he's a map to strategize a battle on. After a moment, Steve stretches his back out, awkwardly, and picks up whatever Peggy's sent him.

"I knew you wanted to go on it," Steve says, carefully nonchalant and slow, not looking up from the page. "'Cause of...'cause of your brother."

Bucky glances over, his chest suddenly heavy. He remembers the look Steve gave him, when he asked for them to go; remembers Steve immediately agreeing to it. He'd gotten it. That had been one of the hits.

"I felt like shit, that I missed the funeral," Steve continues, flipping the paper he's reading over, to look at the blank side. "I liked Georgie. I liked him a lot. I wanted to do something...something in his honor, I s'pose. And I could tell, you know. That you were still...you were still pretty torn up about it."

The heaviness moves down to his stomach.

"Just wanted to help, I guess."

"Yeah," Bucky says, somehow still clear-throated. "Sorry about that."

"Nah. Like I said, I wanted to do it. Was _happy_ to do it," Steve says, with a wry smile and the smallest bit of a shrug, and Bucky can't help the way he breathes at this point, can't help the sheen that creeps over his eyes. It blurs the sideways glance Steve gives him, making it harder to read, but Bucky's known the guy since 19-goddam-29, hasn't he? He knows when Steve is about to push, when Steve isn't going to take no for an answer; he knows how lovely Steve is, how much he lives for others, how badly he wants to be of service. Peggy's lipstick digs harder and harder into his thigh and Steve never mocked him for those afternoons with his sisters; he even drew Bucky with the same amount of dignity that he applied to anything else, despite how much it _must_ have hurt him to do so.

"You gonna tell me what's going on with you?" Steve asks, and maybe Peggy _has_ said something to him, maybe Bucky doesn't have an escape route.

Maybe if he's changing, if Hydra's used him for their own cruel, filthy purposes, he can give that knowledge to Steve, even just a little of it, and it'll be okay.

"Kreichsberg," Bucky croaks. "It...they...they did things to me."

"Yeah," Steve says, in a dangerous sort of quiet. "I know. I've read the reports."

Oh God. He hadn't said anything about _that_ to the people who interviewed him. Maybe the Hydra people talked, maybe his brothers-in-arms heard and reported it themselves. Oh, shit...but if Steve already knows, and he's borne it so gracefully all this time, then, then...

"Family curse, right?" Bucky says, willing his jaw to unclench, because Steve knows about what Winifred was forced to do, knows about Bucky's unknown and hated father, and he's never used it against Bucky. "Least it was me and not one of the girls."

There's a very long, very heavy pause, before "What?" floats across the room, and all the blood inside Bucky, the intoxication and its attendant truthfulness that he'd pretended into existence, evaporates.

Oh no. Oh shit, oh no, fuck, _fuck_ , that's not what Steve _meant_...

"Buck?" Steve asks, after another, longer, heavier silence; his voice is that terrible kind of stiff, the same one he used when he told Bucky that Sarah wasn't going to make it, sorrow and burgeoning anger mixing into something unbearable. "What are you talking about?"

No. He can't do it, can't say any more. He can't put this on Steve's plate. He is too old for these games. He is not thirteen anymore.

He flips over, facing away from Steve, and he doesn't even have to pretend to throw up.

*

Steve mops up the mess in total quiet, quickly and with no eye contact. Afterwards he tells Bucky that he shouldn't drink anymore if this is what it's gonna do to him, and that's an order. He leaves with the reports that he has to drop off at HQ, and he doesn't come back for awhile.

He won't ask Bucky to talk about it again. Bucky doesn't actually want to, that much is clear. 

"You remember that time I made you ride the Cyclone at Coney Island?"

(Why does he ask that? Why now, when Zola is only hundreds of feet away from them? He's not pretending to be totally ossified; he needs to have total command of himself...)

It's been a few days. Things have been...normal. They've all been busy, preparing for this train raid--and God is Steve looking forward to getting Zola, now more than ever--but Bucky hasn't actively avoided speaking to or being around him, and Steve is happy to let him set that tone.

"Yeah, and I threw up?" Steve responds, because probably Bucky only kinda remembers that the topic of the Cyclone had come up recently. He _was_ pretty drunk, after all.

(They won't treat each other any differently, in any circumstance, not even this one. He has to make sure. He needs that anchor, going into this.)

"This isn't payback, is it?" (He didn't make Steve hate him; he didn't push too far, hand him too much?)

"Now why would I do that?" Yeah, Bucky definitely doesn't remember, otherwise he'd know why Steve had done it in the first place. 

Gabe interrupts, but that's okay. Now's not the time in any case; Steve'll remind Bucky later. He probably shouldn't have sat on it all these years, anyway. Bucky's tough, always has been, but it would probably help him to know. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **TW discussions of basically everything in the last two chapters**
> 
>  
> 
> Unlike last chapter, the drawings here were more collaborative, based on stuff that I had written. I really, really want to thank Pot of Soup, who was so incredibly patient with my dithering and flailing and manuscript loss, and who very much so deserves a better story than what I could give her.

When Steve is ninety-five years old (not dead), he reclaims his best friend. 

Tony's offered them sanctuary at the Tower for now, a week or so after he attacks Bucky with extreme lethal intent. Natasha says that it's because Tony understands. Tony says it's to keep an eye on him, to make sure he doesn't snap and go on a murder spree. 

Steve thinks that if that's the case, they'll get evicted soon. 

Everyone, from Sam and Nat to the neurologist to the psychologist, had said the same thing. _He doesn't know you. He doesn't remember. Don't expect your best friend back. Be prepared for him to...act up._ Steve had nodded, and listened, and held back the pain in his heart that threatened to liquefy and leak out of his eyes, and is completely unprepared for the docile creature that comes to New York with him. 

He's not prepared for a Bucky who, when Tony comes down to their suite and Steve silently hopes Bucky would make himself small or scarce, actually does so. He's not prepared for a Bucky who, when Steve shows him an old photo and prays that it means something to him, studies it for as long as he has to until a recollection comes, or a feeling at least _develops_ toward it. He's not prepared for a Bucky who will laugh ("laugh") at a joke that Steve knows he can't possibly, in his current state, understand.

He needs to know why. Steve's seen the files, forced himself to read every last one more than once just like he did with the ones from Kreichsberg (so sparse in comparison), and while he doesn't think he'll ever forget anything he read, certain things stick out. Translation doesn't mitigate how sickening the perverse glee that Zola and Pierce and their cohorts took in recording their experimentations, even after Bucky forgot his own name and they could let the overt torture peter off, is; how they wrote about him like people speak about a dog learning a new trick, advising a fellow pet owner how to replicate the results. Punish and reward. Shame and praise. _Subject enjoys pleasing handlers._

The first time he reads that he flips the table he's sitting at. 

The third or fourth or fifth time (the files are constantly on Steve's mind, so how often he's actually perused the hard copies themselves is kinda moot), he gets a drink.

Thor, on his jaunts to Midgard, will bring presents for his teammates, like any well-mannered guest. For Steve he almost always brings mead, because for all his general opaqueness Thor can be rather astute. Asgardian booze still burns through Steve pretty quickly, but if he drinks enough in the right amount of time he can get sauced for at least an hour. On an empty stomach, two hours. Not a bad way to spend a Friday night. 

This is new. Bucky always waits to eat with Steve; he doesn't think he's seen Bucky come into the kitchen of his own volition yet. Steve takes in how Bucky, in this moment, looks a little paler, a little gaunter, than he normally does. Maybe something woke him up; according to the neurologist his brain is very busy stitching itself back together and, in the process, hitting a lot of particularly horrific snags. If anyone's earned the right to get drunk, it's Bucky. 

Bucky's always had an animated face. Even the Soldier's blank stare had a weird sort of life in it. So his less-of-a-reaction to the first sip of mead is a little surprising to Steve. Even Tony, whose alcohol tolerance is frankly concerning, had gagged and coughed upon trying just a drop. Proportionately, Bucky should...Bucky should...

The most useful piece of advice had come from Fury, who told him to approach recovering Bucky like any other extraction mission, needing patient reconnaissance and careful planning, and Steve is present enough to slow down his own intake for the sake of observation. He keeps drinking, so Bucky won't stop, but slows enough to keep from getting drunk himself, and Bucky matches him. 

They're both painfully sober when it occurs to Steve that, duh. Zola was a cheap, fascist imitation of Erskine but even he could probably see the benefit of a soldier who couldn't get impaired by booze. That must've been a product of whatever they'd done to Bucky after the fall from the train. Great, and there goes that photographic memory scanning all the pages Steve's read, searching for the moment when Zola's secretary would cheerily jot down that Asset could no longer...

Asset could no longer...

He needs to be careful, to be so goddamn careful. Bucky always looks at him immediately, silently, waiting for orders. Try for a neutral expression. Try to not lead him to an answer. 

Bucky answering in that matter-of-fact tone is the coldest comfort Steve has ever felt, after the half-second of wondering if Bucky was going to give him the answer he wanted, rather than the truth. 

It makes sense, though. Total transparency in the face of direct inquiries had been expected of the Soldier, after all. For about seventy years, "what I want to hear" had been synonymous with "the unmitigated truth." 

This realization is going to be helpful. It also makes Steve want to pitch his glass against the wall.

 _Why_ is the next question, and as Steve is figuring out how to phrase it, he realizes he doesn't have to. Bucky's not the only one getting memories back. 

_"How come you never come over for Shabbos anymore, Buck?"_

_"Hey, Bucky, look. Remember this? I haven't drawn you lookin' like this in a long time."_

_"You okay? ...You sure you're okay? ...All right."_

That's good. Humor is good, even this painful absurdity, the kind that plunges in a knife and twists it. "Nah. It's too ingrained with you. Looking after me. And people in general. T's'what you do best." He catches Bucky's hand as it comes up again, holding it while he wipes at his own eyes with his other hand. "You just. You gotta let _me_ give it a try sometime, Buck." A cold memory sweeps through his whole body, bringing with it the stench of vomit and scotch, and without realizing he squeezes Bucky's hand as tightly as he can. "I won't fuck it up this time."

Something cracks inside Bucky then, the smallest hairline fracture of some new feeling. He pulls slightly at Steve's hand, making it sway to and fro as he tries to suss the feeling out, comparing it against what little he remembers from his youth and what he's gained since Steve freed him from Hydra. The closest he can come up with is how Steve's shoulders visibly drop after Tony leaves the suite on a cordial note. Relief, he thinks it might be. 

He's been told by his therapists that it's good for him, healthy for him, to follow his feelings, to let himself react, without calculation. So he tries to simply observe, rather than direct, himself pulling Steve's hand closer to him, brushing his lips over Steve's fingers before resting his forehead against him. To catalogue how it makes him feel, rather than tell himself how it ought to. 

"Thank you" bubbles up from somewhere far away, maybe from decades ago, buried deep. When Steve echoes the sentiment, it's new, and raw, and no less profound.

The clock chimes on the wall nearby, marking the shift between Friday and Saturday. He'd always been kinda fascinated with that, how one moment could be two different things at once, depending on how a person looked at it. A new start from one perspective, and from a second, just another minute in the same day.

Seems fitting.

"Good Shabbos, Buck."

"Good Shabbos, Steve," Bucky answers, and it feels like it's for both of them.

*

It's hard, because it's not like smoking; it's not a habit they want him to quit totally. Concern, compassion, empathy; these are unnecessary qualities for a weapon, detrimental even, and Bucky isn't a weapon. And the anxiety--that's what the therapists call it--has probably been with Bucky since birth, or since early childhood at least (Bucky digs as far back as he can, and Steve digs further, to recall what Winifred had been like; the counselor nods sagely at the reports of how high-strung the woman had been, apparently this thing is partly genetic); even with Bucky's knock-off serum working hard to keep his brain at maximum functional capacity, it's not something that's just going to disappear.

There are all sorts of therapies for it, is the good news, and Steve...he doesn't insist. He tries hard not to, at least. Encouragement, not orders; nothing that could be even vaguely interpreted as orders. Orders would make it about him, and it's not about him at all, until one of the counselors pulls him aside and says that he really ought to consider seeing someone too, and Bucky, who overhears, later point-blank asks him to do it. 

"It would help me if you did," Bucky says, and it's not a lie, it's just only half the truth. This time Steve sees it for what it is, but it's important for Bucky to be able to trust his own judgement, enough to give people advice, so he agrees. 

At some point he's advised-encouraged to start drawing again; "She calls it a _creative outlet_ " he reports to Bucky later on the same day, and then smiles. "You wanna model for me again?"

"Did you like having me model?"

"Huh? Yeah, why?"

Bucky furrows his brow, purses his lips slightly. "I thought...you didn't, at some point."

"Do you remember why?" That's how this sort of thing has to start; let him try to fill in his own blanks first before Steve does it for him. 

"It was..." He's trying, and the exact memory is elusive, but the impression is fairly strong. "I was...too much like something, something you hated."

"Buck, there is _nothing_ about you that I have ever hated," Steve says, his blood rising, and instead of willing himself to calm down he waits for the adrenaline to recede naturally. Thankfully it doesn't take too long, so he can move on to the next phase of questioning. "Do you remember when you started thinking that?"

"Early on? I remember saying that I'd...outgrown it."

"Outgrown..." Steve doesn't recall being told anything along those lines by Bucky himself, but he's learned not to limit himself to that. After a second, he's combed enough of his memories of the girls to have an answer. "You'd let your sisters, uh, you'd let your sisters put all their jewelry on you, and their uh, cosmetics. You stopped when we were, like, twelve or so..."

He trails off as Bucky takes in the information, chews on it, and waits for the verdict.

"That'd explain it," Bucky finally says, with a weird laugh, because he doesn't see a whole ton of women in his everyday anymore but he finds himself fascinated with the faces and necks and wrists and fingers of his lady counselors and Pepper and Natasha, when he sees them. "Yeah. I think I remember that now."

"I never hated that on you," Steve says. "I thought it was...nice, that you did that for th--..." 

Oh.

_Oh._

"Buck, that wasn't...you didn't have to do that. I wouldn't've..."

"I know you wouldn't've," Bucky says, so it must be something else, and Steve racks his brain for what it might be.

"I never thought you were... _mocking_ me or anything with that. I mean, God, Buck. I knew what it felt like to feel... _off_. I would've...understood. At least I _hope_ I would've."

Bucky nods. People had underestimated Steve a lot back then; he knows that. That he'd done the same in some respects shouldn't come as shocking, as unpalatable as the realization is. 

"That still something you're...you're interested in?"

It _had_ always been nice to see Steve prove people wrong, though. Even when it was you. Bucky nods.

"Okay. Then we'll...if you're up for, when you're up for going out, we can...get something for you."

The day they do they make a stop beforehand. Bucky's family had all moved out of the city at some point in their lives, so it's only his brother in that Brooklyn cemetery that he hasn't visited since 1930. The grave is neatly but indifferently kept by the groundskeeper, and luckily Bucky had enough foresight to bring flowers and nicely colored stones to leave there.

Ghoulishly, there's also a plaque nearby memorializing Bucky that no one's gotten around to removing.

"If we insist on it, we could probably get them to get rid of this," Steve says, tapping the corner of it with the toe of his shoe.

Bucky considers Steve's words for a moment. As tempting as it is sometimes to think of himself as some new person wearing James Buchanan Barnes' body, he was never actually dead, not even as the Winter Soldier. A headstone _is_ probably inappropriate.

Then he looks at Georgie's grave, and musters up every last memory he has of him. Like with so many things he tries to remember, the images and sounds themselves are disjointed, but they're vivid enough to leave a feeling, an impression. Georgie's is that of a gaping hole, dug suddenly and deeply, impossible to fill no matter how many desperate attempts were made.

"We can leave it," Bucky says, because he is not thirteen anymore, because the part of him who tried to fill it deserves the peace afforded the dead, and the rest of him wants, _deserves_ the hope given the living.

"Okay," Steve says, before Bucky has the chance to underestimate him again. He takes a handful of stones and lays them atop the plaque; he offers Bucky his hand, because he understands, because he won't fuck it up again.

Bucky takes it, and they leave the dead behind. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've played around with the idea of Nonbinary/Gender Nonconforming Bucky for awhile, and haven't really settled on what he would identify as. The label I felt most comfortable thinking of him as was boy+demigirl, but as I'm cis I want to tread carefully in case I'm using the terms wrong, so I declined to identify him in the text. 
> 
> Steve meanwhile, as in all my MCU stories, is an intersex boy; he has between Grades 2 and 3 Partial Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome.
> 
> Just like with my other CRBB sorry, there is probably a lot more I could have done with this, but given the time restraints and technical setbacks I had, I hope I put out something worth publishing. Once again, thank you so much to Pot of Soup, and thank you everyone for reading.


End file.
